The Old Graduation Speech Lie

Don't believe it.

You'll want to. It will sound sweet and satisfying and make perfect sense when it first enters your brain. It's so inviting, so encouraging, so assuring. It will run up to your picture of the future and plants a giant happy face sticker on it. You will be sitting there as a graduating student, as a supportive friend, as a celebrating parent, or as a casual spectator, and you will want this to be true. A speaker, or perhaps the speaker at a graduation ceremony will stand up and say the oft-uttered magic words, their stated thesis as the key to your future, whoever you are and whatever you aspire to: "Just believe in yourself, and you'll go far this world."

Don't believe it. It's an old lie that's been repeated hundreds of times at hundreds of graduations. The University president boldly proclaimed those words to me and my fellow UNI graduates in 2002, and I've read and heard those words come late spring many times since. Those words are dusted off, wrapped in new packaging and re-gifted to unsuspecting audiences time and time again because they work - it's what people are dying to hear.

You want to believe it. All I have to do is believe in myself, and I'll be fine. No, scratch that; I'll be great. I can do it myself. I am a good person who possesses great skills and a winning personality. It's heavenly.

Unfortunately, no, you're not, and no you don't. And this line of thinking will be fatal to your future. There is so much you need that other people have. They are who you need to believe in.

Believe in the people in your life who will ask more from you than you're comfortable with. They will be teachers or pastors or friends or neighbors or somebody you hear on the radio. They will want more for you than you'll want for yourself, and they will lead you places you had no idea you wanted to go.

Believe in your community. You will need a place to belong, a place to take pride in, a place where somebody's got your back and will return your garbage can when it rolls away or admire your garden handiwork or chop up the tree that fell in your yard. You will need a place to belong that you want to make proud, that you want to care for, that you realize is something bigger than yourself and therefore makes you better.

Believe in a spouse or in friends who will tell you that you're talking too much, that you're being lazy, or that you need to call your sibling again, and who then tell you they love you anyway.

Believe in roommates and neighbors you don't like and co-workers who make you uncomfortable. Believe in differences of opinion as good things in your life that make you wiser, stronger, and more sympathetic without costing you your worldview. And be prepared for them to change that worldview a little bit as well.

Believe in your family. They will ask more of you than you want to give, and you will find out how much joy that "sacrifice" ultimately brings you.

Believe in your friends. One day, something will happen and you will lose your belief in some of them. But then you'll find out who you can believe in for all days and all times. And they will be the ones sitting in your living room or outside around your fire who listen while you say something that you've never said before because you've never thought it before, and it will be because they bothered to ask you.

Believe in God, who is enough, even in the absence of all the rest.

But for goodness sake, don't believe in yourself. You are not enough. And life wouldn't be any good if you were.